Harold W. Percival

CHAPTER IV

OPERATION OF THE LAW OF THOUGHT

Section 7

The law of thought. Physical, psychic, mental, and noetic destiny.

Thus the Great Law by which the plan is worked for lowering, condensing and materializing spirit or force into matter through the beings and forms of nature until these are fashioned into a human body, and then for raising and sublimating that matter which becomes an aia and then a Triune Self until that Triune Self becomes an Intelligence, has at the human stage the aspect of the law of thought, as destiny.

The law of thought centers on the rightness of the thinker of the Triune Self, under the circumstances of a given situation. Physical conditions offer to the human an opportunity to perform his duty. Duty is measured by responsibility and determined by conscience. Duty is that part of the doer’s destiny selected from all its past as necessary to be disposed of in the present; responsibility is the degree of knowledge in the particular situation; and conscience, when selfness sends the message through rightness, is the knowledge which warns of departure from right. In every situation in life there is a duty, easy or hard, of action or inaction. When the duty is presented the human does it or fails to do it. The doing or not doing is the result of the action of mind with desire.

The Light of the Intelligence which is diffused in a part of the mental atmosphere of the human combines with desire into thinking and then into a thought. Certain mental operations of the body-mind are what are commonly called mind. From such thinking and thoughts come all physical acts or omissions, the creation, existence and destruction of all the objects and institutions which are man-made, all physical events and also the forms and beings in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms—everything on the physical plane. Everything existing on the physical plane is the exteriorization of a thought, and must be balanced through the one who issued the thought, in accordance with his responsibility, and at the conjunction of time, place and condition. These results must by interiorizations be brought back to their source, to the end that by the effect on the doer there shall be an adjustment. The adjustment is brought about by a balancing factor which is in the thought as soon as it is issued and is connected with the tendency of the Great Universe to remain in equilibrium.

The operation of this law affects the conception or entertainment of a thought in the heart, its issue through the brain and its externalization through the breath-form and the physical body as an immediate act and possibly as many events produced by the thought, the energy of which is not exhausted until it is balanced. From the exteriorizations come results. Only the physical results are determined by the law of thought and are physical destiny. The psychic, mental and noetic results upon the one who generated the thought (while they are a purpose of the law of thought) are balanced not exclusively by the decrees of the law, but are largely determined by the man himself and are the conditions under which he exists.

There are four things involved or concerned in the creation and exteriorization and balancing of a thought as destiny. These are: A unit of nature, a desire, Conscious Light, and a balancing factor. The unit of nature represents the object of nature desired by that desire, and to which it is bonded by the Conscious Light. The exteriorization is the physical act, object or event which is the result of the thinking and attachment to the object of nature. The balancing factor brings about an adjustment of all things involved and restores the four to their proper sources, thus freeing the Light and the desire from their bondage to nature.

A thought is conceived by the bonding of a desire and an object of nature when a human wants to get something or to do or avoid acts as they are pleasant or unpleasant, and which bring him the feeling of comfort, well-being, joy or satisfaction, or of pain, grief, or dissatisfaction. This affects the doer as a feeling of right or wrong. Conscience warns of a departure from the standard of right.

Once issued, a thought tends to exteriorization as a physical act, object or event. Its course runs to the nature-side of the light plane of the light world. The thought may at first be too weak for materialization. But one thought is usually related to another. They run along the same line, getting their aims from a certain desire. Soon the first is reinforced sufficiently for materialization. Then it proceeds to the light plane of the light world, then moves down the nature-side until it reaches the life world, then the form world and then the physical world. There it waits in the radiant state until it can become physical as an act, an object or an event or as many events.

Events continue to occur as exteriorizations of a thought as long as its energy endures and that continues until the thought is balanced in the physical, form, life and light worlds. These physical effects are perceived by the human through the four senses and may be felt in a fourfold way: as a result of a disturbance of physical well-being through pain, or by psychic feeling as grief or as fear, or by a moral feeling as of shame or disgrace, or by a mental disturbance as from loss of money or influence, or by a combination of some or all of these four kinds of feeling affecting the personality. Agreeable sensations are felt in the same way by the human. These four kinds of feelings, especially if painful, teach the human; they pay him and make him pay, and tend to bring about an adjustment of the action of the Conscious Light with desire and an object of nature. These objects may not be attained at once or in a lifetime, or even in many lives.

There are many factors which interfere with the speedy attainment of these purposes. Some of them are the factors mentioned which hold back exteriorizations on the physical plane. Then there is ignorance and unwillingness to pay, to learn and to adjust, which retard the action of the law on all planes. Also it takes much longer for matter to advance in the form and physical worlds than it does for thought to impress matter in the life world. But paying, learning and adjusting have to wait for and follow upon the events on the physical plane. Therefore there are in the form world and life world conditions in which the flow and progress is restrained until there is an outlet into the physical world. These conditions of inhibition and retardation cause the accumulation of forces in the life world and the form world while they have to wait for the time, place and condition that will permit their orderly appearance on the physical plane. These states in the various worlds are a man’s future, his destiny. They are of his own making, but his destiny nevertheless, and they determine to a large degree his thinking, his feelings and his acting.

So there are four kinds of destiny: physical, psychic, mental and noetic destiny. They are the conditions under which the human lives on the physical plane and in the psychic, mental and noetic atmospheres of his Triune Self.

This destiny is sometimes spoken of as good or bad, but such terms are unfit. Destiny in itself is neither good nor bad. It is agreeable or disagreeable, acceptable or not acceptable. The question is that of balancing and so ending the exteriorizations, or of not balancing. The question is not of good or bad. So-called good destiny may be bad and bad destiny may be good—according to what use is made of it.